Tuesday, December 31, 2019

End of Year Post: Last 3 Trips of the Year

I ended up taking trips in October, November, and December. My October trip was to Monterey, CA. I flew from LAX nonstop to the tiny airport in Monterey. The flight up the coast was on United Express on their E175, which is my favorite family of narrow-body jets. 


Deplaning by stairs is always the best.

There's only 1 carousel at the airport.

After a quick weekend trip, the return flight was on a smaller CRJ-200. The waiting area in the terminal seems quite large for the small planes that usually fly in and out. 



CRJ to LAX just landed

Long walk to the plane

Walking to the plane



empty exit row

Leaving Monterey


super dirty window


My November trip was to Boston. I flew Alaska Airlines, which is my new favorite airlines, to Newark. Then I changed to JetBlue from Newark to Boston.

Alaska Airlines 737-900ER across the country

I sat in the exit row on a very full morning flight.


My flight from LAX arrived in Terminal A in Newark. JetBlue also uses Terminal A, but in a different section of the terminal. My flight was delayed by over an hour and so I ended up with about 3 hours to kill, so I took the airtrain to terminal B to find a lounge I could access. I found one and sat there for at least an hour. My plane to Boston was an E190, which was a new type on JetBlue for me. They don't usually fly those planes on the west coast.

Boarding the jetBlue E190

I spent a quick weekend in Boston, which I had never been to before, and I loved it. I had amazing food and even did a duck tour. I ate dinner one table over from the football player, Troy Aikman. I also saw and VP Joe Biden walk into my friend's hotel. My flight back home left pretty late so I had almost a whole day on my last day in Boston. I wasn't in the exit row this time but I was closer to the front in Premium Class. The best thing was that the seat next to me stayed open and it was so nice.



My December trip was a few weeks later and I flew from Orange County to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. On the way up I had an exit row seat with the an open middle seat. It was awesome. 




A few days later I flew back home on another Alaska Airlines 737-800. This time I was upgraded and had seat 3A.

A tasty sandwich was the meal for the 2.5 hour flight.

Beautiful view of Mt. Rainier on the way home.


Parked next to an Alaska E175

I didn't end up flying all that much this year. I flew on 23 flights for 33,323 miles. Internationally, I flew to Japan and Thailand. 


Happy New Year and have a great 2020. 

Friday, September 6, 2019

Alaska Airlines San Diego to Sacramento


I had a bunch of Alaska Airlines credit and decided to use it to visit family in the Sacramento area. The only nonstop to Sacramento from Southern California on Alaska was out of San Diego, so I booked it. San Diego has a lounge called Airspace Lounge that I had access to and they give you a $10 credit to items on their menu. They also have snacks and drinks for self service. 

the view from the Airspace Lounge
$10 credit with admission
Buffalo chicken salad wrap for lunch
my E-175 to Sacramento
view from seat 4A

chocolate goes with red wine right? 

JAP 787 going back to Tokyo

leaving San Diego
landing in Sacramento

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Japan Airlines from Bangkok to Narita and American Airlines to LAX


This is Part 7, the last part of my most recent trip to Japan and Thailand. Our flight back home left Bangkok at 8:00am to Tokyo Narita on Japan Airlines, and then connected to American Airlines back to LAX. Since we had to be at the airport at 6:00am to check in, we had to leave the hotel at 5:30a, which meant we had to wake up before 5:00am. The Waldorf knew this and arranged to have a box breakfast sent up to us at 5:00am. It was a huge breakfast actually with fruit, croissant, muffin, sandwich, juice, water, and coffee. It was amazing. The same hotel car took us back to the airport. This time it was a much shorter ride so early in the morning. Japan Airlines has their own lounge at Bangkok airport and I had a bowl of curry and stocked up on some snacks. 

JAL Sakura lounge at BKK airport
our JAL 787-800 to Narita
push back in the rain

we followed the Qatar A350 to the runway
same seat as the flight to BKK
snack and water
Even though this was an early flight, breakfast was not served. It was a regular lunch/dinner type of meal service for this 6 hour flight to Tokyo. Again, I ordered the Japanese meal for my last meal on the Japanese airline.



pathetic dessert, but the fruit was good
descent into Narita

Once we landed at Narita we just over 2 hours for a layover. We found the Sakura Lounge and it was packed. We were in the satellite part of Terminal 2. We didn't want to go to the main part of the terminal because our flight to LAX was leaving from the satellite too.

our American Airlines 787-900
a nice JAL 777 next to us
pushing back from gate 86
really nice Flagship Business class seat
lots of storage space and 2 windows
gigantic screen and some champagne
leaving Tokyo at sunset

we were racing the Air New Zealand 787-900
some warm nuts and red wine

Japanese meal again
it was really yummy
Curry was part of the western meal, but I asked and I received. It looked terrible, but tasted great.
The meal before we landed was quite good. The panna cotta was great. 
somewhere over California
flying past LAX on our way home